Poem by Christopher Nield

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Christopher Nield (pictured) this Friday.

Nield lives in London, working as a copywriter specialising in charity marketing. He has worked with a range of organisations, including Médecins Sans Frontières, Friends of the Earth, The Camphill Family and Cancer Research UK.

His poetry features in New Poetries IV (Carcanet, 2007), a wide-ranging collection that anyone interested in good emergent poetry from the UK (and beyond) should seek out.

His poems also appear in magazines such as Magma, The London Magazine, PN Review, The Rialto, Nthposition, and Stand. In 2006 he was one of the winners of the Keats-Shelley prize. Nield will be appearing as a reader at the launch of the latest issue of Ambit, 7pm this coming 23 October, at The Owl Bookshop, 209 Kentish Town Road, London NW5.

Prayer Wheel

A circle forms a lotus in the brain,

Omniscient and happy as the sun.

We turn the wheel and watch the world remain

An exiled god, whose broken words explain

Beyond the revolutionary gun,

A circle forms a lotus in the brain

To doubt that titan’s rational disdain

And liberate the many from the one.

We turn the wheel and watch the world remain

A monkey full of wanderlust and pain.

May love describe a heart where there is none.

A circle forms a lotus in the brain,

A hunger to be lit in every vein –

To sit and face the ghost we cannot shun.

We turn the wheel and watch the world remain

A devil’s meditation and refrain:

The mind goes out the moment breath is done.

A circle forms a lotus in the brain;

We turn the wheel and watch the world remain.

poem by Christopher Nield; it originally appeared in The London Magazine; reprinted with permission of the author

Comments

Anonymous said…

Absolutely beautiful. I found this poet on the Epoch Times website.

I was never really a fan of poetry, but reading Chris's The Antidote: Classic Poetry for Modern Life... it's really opened my eyes.

Very moving writer, very moving.

Thu Oct 28, 05:31:00 am 2010

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